So around the beginning of May my family and I packed up and moved from
our home of over 20 years and settled down about an hour away. Things haven’t
been easy but I am finally settling in to being in a new place. The town isn’t
horrible (doesn’t feel like home though) but it does get lonely when you’re an
hour and a half drive to your friends.As an attempt to keep my sanity in strange new surroundings I have made almost weekly trips alone to the movie theatre. Okay I know it sounds really sad, but it’s has actually been amazing. It’s a really different feeling when you know you don’t have to wait for people, line up with friends so that they can get snacks, worry about annoying your girlfriend what you have to piss, or having to converse about what you did and didn’t like. So far I’ve seen The Avengers, MIB 3 and most recently Prometheus; and I’m sure I’ll be seeing many more this summer.
When I first saw trailers hit the internet for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus I started to get super excited, especially when I heard the story was occurring in the same universe as Scott’s Alien films! Since I was a child I have equally loved and been afraid of the Alien series, with its dark, hopeless atmosphere. I think when I was around 10 I even drew comics and wrote my own Alien stories. So last week I finally picked my ass up from behind my monitor and drove to the local Cineplex.
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| Left to right: Charlie Halloway, Elizabeth Shaw, and the android David |
Right off the bat I must
say I was thrown off but the interesting direction they took the story in, and
how the Alien storyline is interwoven. The film starts with two scientists
discovering a final piece of a puzzle that seems to point out Aliens visiting
different cultures in ancient times and all pointing towards a certain
destination. The two paleontologists, Elizabeth Shaw ( Noomi Raprace ) and Charlie
Halloway (Logan Marshall-Green) they pitch their discovery and are funded by an
infinitely rich, dying old, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce). Weyland pays for a
space ship to take them in stasis sleep to a moon mapped out by corresponding
relics on earth. The ship is operated by Mission Director Meredith Vickers
(Charlize Theron) who assisted by the lifelike android David (Michael
Fassbender) as well as a group of contracted engineers and scientists.
Eager
to meet the aliens that they believe hold the secret to life on Earth, the crew
finally lands the moon many millions of miles away and lands on its surface.
Immediately they find large relics from an obviously intelligent civilization,
and what started as a hope filled journey becomes a nightmare they could have
never imagined. The film takes am extremely dark turn when they begin exploring
the alien relics and discover dead bodies in the ship. Suddenly the whole
operation is in danger as secret motives are revealed and the great mystery
unravels in a unprecedented hopeless way.
As with many of Ridley Scott’s films the special effect and costume work
are very well done. They did a fantastic job of showing off a realistic jump
forward in technology (Prometheus takes place in the year 2093) that doesn’t
leave you thinking “pfft yeah right buddy!” The makeup and costume work was
unprecedented notably on the alien “Engineers” and on the amazing
transformation of Guy Pearce to the 93 year old Peter Weyland.
The one major problem I had with Prometheus was mainly in the choice of actors. While much of the cast, especially Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender put on great rolls I often found myself off put and annoyed with Rapace and Marshall-Green’s performance. Through several parts from start to finish their acting comes of unfulfilling, dry and unrealistic.
Despite its short-comings (which it has very few) Prometheus was a fantastic film filled with elements of fear, comedy, suspense and mystery that could easily fulfill a much wider audience compared to its Alien film counter-parts. Despite some annoying acting this film still shines in my book as one of the best films I’ve seen this year. I give this film a very well deserved 8.9/10!
The one major problem I had with Prometheus was mainly in the choice of actors. While much of the cast, especially Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender put on great rolls I often found myself off put and annoyed with Rapace and Marshall-Green’s performance. Through several parts from start to finish their acting comes of unfulfilling, dry and unrealistic.
Despite its short-comings (which it has very few) Prometheus was a fantastic film filled with elements of fear, comedy, suspense and mystery that could easily fulfill a much wider audience compared to its Alien film counter-parts. Despite some annoying acting this film still shines in my book as one of the best films I’ve seen this year. I give this film a very well deserved 8.9/10!
